The Book of Playing Cards

When the victor Referring to Alexander the Great. was despoiling the walls of Thebes and laying them waste with fire, he ordered the flames to be turned away from the Pindaric original: Pindaricis; referring to the house of the Greek lyric poet Pindar, which Alexander famously spared. dwellings. Augustus cherished the divine Maro Publius Vergilius Maro, better known as Virgil. with the highest honor, celebrating his birthday every year in a festive manner. He also raised Gallus Cornelius Gallus, a Roman poet and orator. to high titles, appointing him a tribune of the soldiers with a happy fate. Arcadius The Eastern Roman Emperor (reigned 395–408 AD). himself is said to have erected a memorial column for his own poet. Domitius Likely the Emperor Domitian, known for his patronage of the arts and the establishment of poetic competitions. is said to have decorated Statius with a crown; under whose leadership Silius Silius Italicus, author of the epic Punica., thrice increased by the fasces The fasces were symbols of high Roman magisterial office; Silius served as a consul., earned a name eternal through the centuries. With such great honor did the ancients—striving to add a new laurel to the old—hold the nourishing Muses.

And deservedly so: since they celebrate magnanimous kings with a song destined to live; they drench nations, towns, and kingdoms alike in light; at the same time, they illuminate the illustrious deeds of heroes, both at home and abroad, with illustrious verse—eternal verse, by which their glory may touch the heavens and spread itself throughout the immense world through their merits. The Muse has even made the Gods (if it is permitted to say so).

And certainly a dark gloom would press upon these sacred labors, and the world would waste away in darkness and blind shadow, if the golden Muses of Castalia The Castalides, named after the sacred spring on Mount Parnassus. did not fight against barbarism, or if the heavenly deities did not themselves preserve such great light. Who would know of Hector, if they did not also know Homer? By whose genius not only does Achilles live, but also the chariots, the horses, and the Pelian spear original: Pelias hasta; the spear of Achilles, made from ash wood from Mount Pelion. certainly conquer their own times with the applause of our ancestors. Furthermore, the fortune of Aeneas would be more obscure, had the Muse of divine Maro Virgil, author of the Aeneid. not sung of it.

Nor was anyone ever cheated of exceptional honor by the genius of the poets, who had not attained a record of virtue and...